After a quarter century of grading student essays & carring around a briefcase stuffed with student work for the better part of each semester, I am making the leap to on-line electronic grading. I am using Turnitin’s Grademark system &Â though I’ve only done a few essays so far, it has been working very well. The system is flexible enough to let me underline, insert, highlight, drop in an icon that opens a comment, etc. There are also some rubric & grammar libraries I haven’t gotten into yet.
The main thing I notice is that I have been taking more time on each essay. More time than I can afford, actually. I’m hoping I’ll get more efficient as I become more familiar with the tool. I think that if students take the time to go through comments — which will be much easier for them given my scrawling handwriting — that this system will provide more effective written feedback than I have been able to give in the past. That is, I think this is a good tool. Maybe not revolutionary, but a real advance on paper & green pen.